(Nearly) All Israel’s cruelty and barbarism on Gaza
JVL Introduction
This is a long but necessary read. Starting with an “imaginary” individual story and then taking us through all the horrors of the past 22 months; all the ways it is worse, on individual elements, than almost every other war or conflict. Cumulatively what has been meted out by Israel to the people in Gaza is beyond comprehension. the writer notes that new words have had to be created such as “domicide” and “scholasticide” to try to describe the extent of the damage.
As we absorb news on a daily basis it is hard to remember everything that has happened. Going right back to the first months of the bombardment, this is a helpful, if depressing, summary of the unprecedented scaled of what has happened to the people. “On some level, it doesn’t really matter whether or not Israeli officials are doing all this intentionally (though they unambiguously are) or whether or not the war counts as a genocide (though it most certainly does). As even skimming these facts and figures makes clear, what Israel is doing to Gaza, however you want to define it, is intolerable and world-historically awful.”
LL
This article was originally published by Jacobin on Tue 5 Aug 2025. Read the original here.
Israel’s Gaza War Is One of History’s Worst Crimes Ever
Israel’s war in Gaza combines a staggeringly high death rate, shocking violence toward children, unparalleled physical destruction, and now a world-historical famine. The world has, by objective measure, never seen anything like this.
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This stopped being about what is good or bad for Jews a long time ago. For all out breast-beating it is not we who are suffering. This is all about the Palestinian people, what’s best for them, what can be done for them. Part of that must be doing all the practical work that’s needed to save lives and to bring an end to this carnage. But part of it must be to bring about a sea-change in the Zionist view of the world, to find ways of persuading Zionists, Jewish or otherwise, of the great wrongs Zionism has provoked. The problem is, how do we do one successfully while we are so struggling with the other? Until those Israelis who support Netanyahu’s genocide remember the humanity they share with the Palestinians and learn to have compassion for those who are suffering, the fundamental problem will not go away. As things are, Israel must be forced, politically and materially. No Jew can be happy with that thought, but then again, you get what you give, and in Israel’s case, that includes antipathy and contempt.
UK and the west should be maximising all possible sanctions against Israel and talking to Hamas and other Palestinian agencies.